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Defence in the World

I beg to move,"That this House has considered the matter of defence in the world." I welcome this opportunity to debate the role of defence in the world. Given the limits that we have imposed on ourselves for these debates, I do not have time to go into detail about how all our assets are working together to prevent and resolve conflicts around the world. I will therefore focus my comments on those areas that are most pressing and which have rightly attracted the attention of many hon. Members—namely, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Time and interventions permitting, I shall also address directly the issue of ballistic missile defence. In his leadership campaign, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg) promised to drag me to the Dispatch Box—that may be a paraphrase, but I do not think that it does him an injustice—to discuss ballistic missile defence. I have waited and waited, however, but he has done no such thing. Then again, the Liberal Democrats have been promising to do that for the best part of two years now, and the issue has warranted only one or two interventions from them in any debate, so I suppose that a Liberal Democrat promise is made to be broken.